Buried Car?!?

[mrscalex]

Why did your Uncles bury their cars? Is this a secret tradition I know nothing about?!?

I've read a few of these stories, including from the US. You'd always like to think there's an exciting reason but there never seems to be. I think it just cost too much money in those days to have the car taken away/scrapped so people buried them in their gardens/land because they could get away with it then and it solved the issue of what to do with it.

 

[t-tony]

Never really asked, both had big gardens suppose it was easier than getting someone to take them away. Sadly both no longer with us so will probably never know. Will ask my dad if he can throw any light on it. I do know they were both characters that i enjoyed spending time with as a kid.

It was easier but more importantly for the time cheaper. My dad used to run vans, Ford Thames, Austin A65 (ex water board where he worked) etc. because they were cheaper on road tax back then if they didn't have any side windows behind the doors. He simply bought a second hand coach seat and bolted it to the floor, You lot haven't lived.

Tony.

 

[t-tony]

I've read a few of these stories, including from the US. You'd always like to think there's an exciting reason but there never seems to be. I think it just cost too much money in those days to have the car taken away/scrapped so people buried them in their gardens/land because they could get away with it then and it solved the issue of what to do with it.

Like rats Rob.

Tony.

 

[mrscalex]

Like rats Rob.

Tony.

Apart from cars don't carry the same risk as rats of contaminating the water table or being dug up by foxes and dogs

 

[t-tony]

Agree maybe re the digging up bit but not on contamination. That's why scrapyards were made to remove all oils, fluids, coolant and batteries as cars were taken in for recycling. There's nothing wrong with recycling dead bodies into the ground is there? Humans have been doing it for millenia. You only need 3 feet to defeat foxes when fresh.

Tony.

 

[mrscalex]

We sit surrounded by water courses in Swindon so wouldn't like to say. But I agree cars can certainly contaminate.

Being a railway enthusiast I've investigated a lot of the old railway sites in Swansea. Not somewhere you'd associate with railways but it used to be absolutely stuffed full of them. There was a couple of breakers who took a number of locos for cutting up in the 1960s. In those days the area was largely chemical and smelting works. The ground was therefore generally very contaminated. But all the arsenic etc has long since been cleansed from the soil and built on. But not the breakers yard which sits resolutely empty surrounded by development. Presumably because what drops out of railway locomotives (they did diesel too) is not an easy clean up job.

We moved to Swindon in 1978 when my Dad's office relocated from central London. It was one of the first developments on the old railway works (rest of it still going then but reduced greatly in size). They had to dig out 6ft of old ash to build on the site and some of it was (allegedly) still warm from 10+ years before.

 

[t-tony]

They say that the concrete poured for the Hoover Dam is still curing after (ok a chemical reaction going on) all these years so yes it's possible.
My brother-in-law's grandfather was laid to rest in a grave half full of water at the foot of a hillside many years ago, water and bodies co exist. The water you drink comes from much, much lower in the earth than 6 feet.

Tony.

 

[mrscalex]

They say that the concrete poured for the Hoover Dam is still curing after (ok a chemical reaction going on) all these years so yes it's possible.
My brother-in-law's grandfather was laid to rest in a grave half full of water at the foot of a hillside many years ago, water and bodies co exist. The water you drink comes from much, much lower in the earth than 6 feet.

Tony.

Bizarrely I always remember my science teacher telling us you never knew where water had come from. He quoted the possibility we could have been drinking Henry VIII's little finger. It sounds very bizarre now. But that's what he said and perhaps I foolishly chose to believe it.

This is also the man who when he was teaching us about hot air did an experiment using Wilberforce the class hamster. Having successfully lifted off a foil balloon with cotton wall balls soaked in alcohol he was looking for an additional challenge. Wilberforce was put in a net and tied underneath. He wouldn't take off so more cotton wall and more alcohol where loaded up and hence more flames/heat. The balloon caught fire as it drifted past me on the edge of the assembled group. I was thrown a pair of scissors and told to rescue Wilberforce. Which I did by cutting him free but being scared of small furry things I quickly handed him to Leona Townsend (hamster keeper). I was the class hero for a day - just the day though.

The things even teachers got away with in the early 1980s.

 

[t-tony]

Ha,ha. Very true, our chemistry teacher Mr. Robinson had a cruel streak mate. Scared the crap out of us many times.

Tony.

 

[mrscalex]

He also gave us this piece of wisdom. If ever you don't know the answer to an exam question put either cabbages or Henry VIII (he seemed to like him). On the basis one day the answer is bound to be correct!

 

[t-tony]

Yeah, my old dad used to say something similar, if when reading and you didn't know the word he said to say "wheelbarrow" cos it could be right. That brought a smile back from the old man of which there were few, so thank you.

Tony.

 

[ktnez99]

He also gave us this piece of wisdom. If ever you don't know the answer to an exam question put either cabbages or Henry VIII (he seemed to like him). On the basis one day the answer is bound to be correct!

Should the response to buried cars be cabbages then?

 

[mrscalex]

Should the response to buried cars be cabbages then?

Very possibly